1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electric appliance that includes a display unit such as a display panel for displaying an image. The present invention also relates to an image display controlling method for controlling display of an image on the display unit of the electric appliance. The present invention also relates to a computer-readable recording medium that stores an graphical image display controlling program.
2. Description of the Related Art
Typically, an electric appliance such as a printer, a copying machine or an MFP (Multi Function Peripheral) includes an arithmetic processing part such as a CPU. The arithmetic processing part reads data for display such as an HTML document to generate a graphical image, and then allows a display panel or the like to display the image.
The display panel allows so-called frame display in which plurality of areas (panes) are partitioned by frames.
The display panel is provided with buttons for switching screens. With touch of the buttons, a user performs various operations, for example, changes a magnification upon creation of a printout, and selects a size of a sheet of paper upon creation of the printout.
The display on the display panel is controlled by an arithmetic processing part such as a microprocessor of the electric appliance.
The arithmetic processing part includes a memory, a Central Processing Unit (CPU), and the like. Herein, the memory stores, in advance, frame data for forming frames and pane data for forming pane images to be displayed on panes. The CPU processes the frame data and the pane data, and then allows the display panel to display a graphical image.
The CPU acquires frame data to form frames based on the frame data, acquires pane data specified by the frame data to generate pane images from the acquired pane data, and arranges the pane images in the frames to generate a graphical image. Thereafter, the CPU allows the display panel to display the graphical image.
Conventionally, there has been proposed a server/client system as one example of a technique of realizing the frame display on the display panel.
The server/client system is a business system for managing acceptance of orders, and includes a World Wide Web (WWW) server, a client Personal Computer (PC) and a database server.
As described above, the client PC establishes sessions with the database server without executing processes for establishing, maintaining and shutting down the sessions with the database server on the basis of the programs downloaded to the lower pane.
In the server/client system described above, moreover, when a graphical image composed of frames, which has been originally displayed on the display panel, is switched to a graphical image composed of subsequent frames, the arithmetic processing part acquires frame data of the subsequent frames. Further, the arithmetic processing part newly reads pane data specified by the frame data to generate a graphical image. Herein, the arithmetic processing part reads pane data specified by the frame data of the graphical image displayed originally and pane data specified by frame data of the graphical image to be displayed subsequently, in an overlapping manner. In such a case, conventionally, the client PC processes all pieces of pane data to generate pane images, and then arranges the pane images in a graphical image.